On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, and on the Baptism of Infants 1.1–1.19

Although I am in the midst of great surges of cares and wearinesses, which hold me back from dealing with sinners who forsake the law of God (though even these very troubles I may well lay to the account of the merits of our own sins as well), yet I did not wish, and, to tell you the truth, I was not able, to remain any longer in debt to your zeal, dearest Marcellinus, by which you are all the more dear and delightful to me. For I was so compelled, whether by charity itself, by which in the one unchangeable God we who are to be changed for the better are one, or by the fear that I should offend God in you, who gave you such a desire, so that in serving it I serve him who gave it; so, I say, it compelled me, so it led and drew me to resolve, as far as my slender strength allows, the questions you laid upon me in writing, that this matter for a while prevailed in my mind over others, until I could accomplish something by which it would be plain that I had served your good will, and that of those who care about these things, if not sufficiently, at least obediently.

There are those who say that Adam was so created that he would have died even without the merit of sin, not as a penalty for guilt but by the necessity of nature. They try, of course, to refer what was said in the law, “On the day you eat, you shall die the death,” not to the death of the body but to the death of the soul, which comes about in sin. By this death the Lord signified the unbelieving as dead, of whom he says: “Let the dead bury their dead.” What then will they answer when we read that God said this to the first man, even after the sin, as he rebuked and condemned him: “Earth you are, and into earth you shall go”? For it was not in respect of the soul but, as is plain, in respect of the body that he was earth, and by the death of that same body that he was to go into the earth. For although in respect of the body he was earth, and bore the natural body in which he was created, yet, if he had not sinned, he was to have been changed into a spiritual body and to have passed into that incorruption which is promised to the faithful and the saints, without the punishment of death. That we have a longing for this, we not only feel in ourselves but also recognize from the apostle's admonition, where he says: “For in this we groan, longing to be clothed over with our dwelling which is from heaven, if indeed, being clothed, we shall not be found naked. For we who are in this dwelling groan, being burdened, in that we do not wish to be stripped but to be clothed over, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.” Accordingly, if Adam had not sinned, he was not to have been stripped of the body but clothed over with immortality and incorruption, so that what is mortal might be swallowed up by life, that is, that he might pass from the natural to the spiritual.

Nor was there reason to fear that, if he had lived here longer in a natural body, he would be weighed down by old age and, growing old little by little, would come to death. For if God granted to the clothes and shoes of the Israelites that they were not worn out through so many years, what wonder if the same power were granted to an obedient man, so that, having a natural, that is a mortal, body, he should have in it a certain state in which he would be full of years without decay, and at the time God willed would come from mortality to immortality without death in between? For just as this very flesh which we now have is not for that reason invulnerable, because it is not necessary that it be wounded, so that flesh was not for that reason not mortal, because it was not necessary that it die. Such a condition, I think, was granted, while still in a natural and mortal body, even to those who were taken hence without death. For Enoch and Elijah did not wither with old age through so long a span; yet I do not believe that they have already been changed into that spiritual quality of body such as is promised in the resurrection, which went before first in the Lord; unless perhaps these men do not even need the foods that refresh by their own consumption, but since they were taken up live in such a way that they have a fullness like that of those forty days in which Elijah lived on a cup of water and a cake of bread without other food; or, if they also need such sustenance, perhaps they are fed in paradise as Adam was before he deserved to go out from there because of sin. For he had, as far as I judge, both from the fruits of the trees refreshment against decline and from the tree of life stability against aging.

But besides what God said in punishment, “Earth you are, and into earth you shall go,” which I do not know how it can be understood except of the death of the body, there are other testimonies too by which it appears most evidently that the human race deserved, because of sin, the death not only of the spirit but also of the body. The apostle says to the Romans: “But if Christ is in you, the body indeed is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness. If then the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit dwelling in you.” I think that so clear and open a statement needs not an expositor but only a reader. The body, he says, is dead, not because of earthly frailty, because it was made from the dust of the earth, but because of sin. What more do we seek? And most watchfully he does not say “mortal” but “dead.”

For before it was changed into that incorruption which is promised in the resurrection of the saints, it could be mortal although not going to die, just as this body of ours can be, so to speak, liable to sickness although not going to be sick. For whose flesh is there that cannot be sick, even if by some chance it dies before it falls sick? So that body too was already mortal. That mortality a change into eternal incorruption would have taken away, if righteousness, that is obedience, had remained in man; but what was mortal was not made dead except because of sin. But since that future change in the resurrection will have not only no death, which came about because of sin, but not even the mortality which the natural body had before sin, he does not say, “He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your dead bodies,” although he had said above that the body was dead, but: “He will also give life,” he says, “to your mortal bodies,” so that they will be not only no longer dead but not even mortal, when the natural rises as spiritual, and this mortal puts on immortality, and what is mortal is swallowed up by life.

It would be surprising if anything clearer than this plain statement were sought. Unless perhaps we must listen to what is said against this clarity, so that we should understand the “dead body” here in the sense in which it was said: “Put to death your members which are on earth.” But in this sense the body is put to death because of righteousness, not because of sin; for we put to death our members which are on earth in order to do righteousness. Or if they think that “because of sin” was added so that we should understand not that sin was committed but that sin should not be committed, as if he said, “The body indeed is dead in order that sin may not be committed,” what then does it mean that, when he had added “but the spirit is life,” he added “because of righteousness”? For it would have sufficed to add the life of the spirit in such a way that here too “in order that sin may not be committed” was understood, so that we should understand both on account of one thing, both that the body is dead and that the spirit is life in order that sin may not be committed. For so, even if he only wished to say “because of righteousness,” that is, in order that righteousness may be done, both could be referred to this: both that the body is dead and that the spirit is life in order that righteousness may be done. But in fact he said both that the body is dead because of sin and that the spirit is life because of righteousness, assigning different merits to different things: to the death of the body the merit of sin, to the life of the spirit the merit of righteousness. Therefore if, as cannot be doubted, the spirit is life because of righteousness, that is, by the merit of righteousness, surely what else ought or can we understand by “the body is dead because of sin” than “by the merit of sin,” if we do not try to pervert and twist the most open sense of Scripture at our own pleasure? The light of the following words is added to this as well. For when, defining the grace of the present time, he said that the body is indeed dead because of sin, because in it, not yet renewed by the resurrection, the merit of sin remains, that is, the necessity of death, but that the spirit is life because of righteousness, because, although we are still burdened with the body of this death, yet, the renewal having already begun in the inner man, we breathe again in the righteousness of faith; nevertheless, lest human ignorance should hope for nothing concerning the resurrection of the body, he says that that very body which he had called dead in the present age because of the merit of sin will in the future be given life because of the merit of righteousness; and not only so that from dead it becomes living, but also that from mortal it becomes immortal.

Although, then, I fear that a manifest matter may be obscured rather than explained, yet attend to the light of the apostle's statement. “But if Christ,” he says, “is in you, the body indeed is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness.” This was said so that people should not think that they have either no benefit or little from the grace of Christ because they must of necessity die in the body. For they ought to note that the body still bears the merit of sin, being bound by the condition of death, but that the spirit has already begun to live because of the righteousness of faith, the spirit which had itself been extinguished in man by a kind of death of unbelief. Do not think, then, he says, that little gift has been conferred on you by the fact that Christ is in you, since in a body dead because of sin your spirit now lives because of righteousness; nor for that reason despair of the life of the body too. “For if the Spirit of him who raised Christ from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit dwelling in you.” Why is the smoke of contention still poured over so great a light? The apostle cries out: the body indeed is dead in you because of sin, but your mortal bodies also will be given life because of righteousness, because of which the spirit is already life now, and all this will be accomplished through the grace of Christ, that is, through his Spirit dwelling in you; and still there is outcry against it! He also says how it comes about that life turns death into itself by putting it to death. “Therefore, brothers,” he says, “we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the flesh, you will live.” What else is this than: if you live according to death, the whole will die; but if by living according to life you put death to death, the whole will live?

Again, what he says, “Through a man came death, and through a man the resurrection of the dead”: how can it be understood except of the death of the body, since, when he said this, he was speaking of the resurrection of the body and urging it with most earnest and keen purpose? What then is it that he says here to the Corinthians, “Through a man came death, and through a man the resurrection of the dead; for as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive,” if not what he says also to the Romans, “Through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death”? This death they wish to be understood as not of the body but of the soul; as if something different were said to the Corinthians, “through a man came death,” where they are not at all allowed to take it as the death of the soul, because the subject was the resurrection of the body, which is the opposite of the death of the body. That is also why only death is mentioned there as having come through a man, and not sin as well: because the subject was not righteousness, which is the opposite of sin, but the resurrection of the body, which is the opposite of the death of the body.

As for this testimony of the apostle, in which he says, “Through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death,” you told me in your letter that they try to twist it into some new opinion, but you did not say what it is they think these words mean. As far as I have learned from others, they hold this: that the death mentioned there is not of the body, which they will not allow that Adam deserved by sinning, but of the soul, which comes about in the sin itself; and that sin itself passed from the first man to other men not by propagation but by imitation. For this is why they refuse to believe that in infants too original sin is loosed through baptism, since they contend that there is none at all in those being born. But if the apostle had wished to mention the sin which entered into this world not by propagation but by imitation, he would have named as its source not Adam but the devil, of whom it is written, “The devil sins from the beginning,” and of whom we also read in the book of Wisdom: “But through the envy of the devil death entered into the world.” For since this death came to men from the devil in this way, not because they were propagated from him but because they imitated him, it at once adds: “And they imitate him who are of his party.” Accordingly, when the apostle mentioned the sin and death which passed from one to all by propagation, he set as its source the one from whom the propagation of the human race took its beginning.

Indeed all who through disobedience transgress God's commandment imitate Adam; but it is one thing to be an example to those who sin by will, another to be the origin of those who are born with sin. For Christ too is imitated by his saints in pursuing righteousness; hence the same apostle says, “Be imitators of me, as I also am of Christ.” But besides this imitation, his grace also works our enlightenment and justification inwardly, by that work of which the same preacher of his says: “Neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the growth.” For by this grace he grafts into his body even baptized infants, who certainly are not yet able to imitate anyone. Just as, then, he in whom all are made alive, besides offering himself as an example of righteousness to those who imitate him, also gives to the faithful the most hidden grace of his Spirit, which he secretly pours even into infants; so also he in whom all die, besides being an example for imitation to those who transgress the Lord's commandment by will, also by the hidden infection of his carnal concupiscence infected in himself all who were to come from his stock. From this, and from nowhere else, the apostle says: “Through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death; and so it passed to all men, in whom all sinned.” If I said this, these men would resist and cry out that I was not speaking rightly nor thinking rightly. For in these words they would understand no other meaning from any man who said them than the one they refuse to understand in the apostle. But because they are the words of one to whose authority and teaching they submit, they charge us with slowness of understanding, while they try to twist what has been said plainly into I know not what else. “Through one man,” he says, “sin entered into the world, and through sin death”: this belongs to propagation, not imitation, for otherwise he would say “through the devil.” And what no one doubts, he means that first man who was called Adam. “And so,” he says, “it passed to all men.”

Then what follows, “in whom all sinned”: how circumspectly, how properly, how unambiguously it is said! For if you understand the sin which entered into the world through one man, in which sin all sinned, it is certainly plain that the personal sins of each are one thing, in which only those sin whose sins they are, and this one sin another, in which all sinned when all were that one man. But if it is understood not of the sin but of the one man himself, in which one man all sinned, what is clearer even than this clarity? We read, of course, that those who believe in Christ are justified in him, because of the hidden communication and inspiration of spiritual grace, by which whoever cleaves to the Lord is one spirit, although his saints also imitate him. Let someone read me anything like this about those who imitated his saints, whether anyone is said to have been justified in Paul or in Peter or in any of those whose authority stands high among the people of God; except that we are said to be blessed in Abraham, as it was said to him, “In you all nations will be blessed,” because of Christ, who is called his seed according to the flesh. This is said more plainly when the same thing is said thus: “In your seed all nations will be blessed.” But I do not know whether anyone will find it said in the divine oracles that anyone sinned or sins in the devil, although all the wicked and ungodly imitate him. Yet, since the apostle said of the first man, “in whom all sinned,” there is still dispute about the propagation of sin, and some cloud or other of imitation is set against it.

Note also what follows. For when he had said, “in whom all sinned,” he went on to add: “For until the law sin was in the world”; that is, because not even the law could take away sin, the law which came in so that sin might abound, whether the natural law, under which each person, once using reason, begins to add his own sins to original sin, or that law which was written by Moses and given to the people. “For if a law had been given which could give life, righteousness would indeed be from the law. But Scripture has shut up all things under sin, so that the promise might be given from faith in Jesus Christ to those who believe.” “But sin was not reckoned when there was no law.” What is “was not reckoned” except that it was not known and was not thought to be sin? For it was not held by the Lord God himself as though it did not exist, since it is written: “Whoever have sinned without the law will perish without the law.”

“But death reigned,” he says, “from Adam until Moses,” that is, from the first man even to the law itself, which was promulgated by God, because not even the law could take away the reign of death. For he wants the reign of death to be understood as when the guilt of sin so dominates men that it does not let them come to eternal life, which is the true life, but drags them even to the second death, which is eternal as a penalty. This reign of death in any man is destroyed only by the grace of the Savior, which was at work in the saints of old, all who, before Christ came in the flesh, nevertheless belonged to his helping grace, not to the letter of the law, which could only command, not help. For what is now revealed in the New Testament was hidden in the Old, by a most just ordering of the times. Therefore death reigned from Adam until Moses in all who were not helped by the grace of Christ, so that the reign of death might be destroyed in them; therefore even in those who did not sin in the likeness of Adam's transgression, that is, who had not yet sinned by their own personal will as he did, but drew original sin from him, “who is a type of the one to come,” because in him was established the type of condemnation for the posterity to come, who would be created by descent from him, so that from one all would be born into condemnation, from which nothing frees but the grace of the Savior. I know indeed that most Latin manuscripts read thus: “Death reigned from Adam until Moses over those who sinned in the likeness of Adam's transgression”; and those who read it so refer this too to the same meaning, taking it that those sinned in the likeness of Adam's transgression who sinned in him, so that they were created like him: as men from a man, so sinners from a sinner, dying from one who would die, and condemned from one condemned. But the Greek manuscripts, from which the translation into Latin was made, all or nearly all have what I set down first.

“But not as the offense,” he says, “so also the gift; for if through the offense of one many died, much more has the grace of God and the gift in the grace of one man Jesus Christ abounded to many”: not “to many more,” that is, to many more men, for no more are justified than are condemned, but “much more has it abounded.” For Adam from his one offense begot guilty men; but Christ by his grace loosed and forgave even the offenses of their own will which men added to the original sin in which they were born, which he says more clearly in what follows.

But look more carefully at what he says, that through the offense of one many died. For why through the offense of that one, and not rather through their own offenses, if imitation and not propagation is to be understood in this place? But note what follows: “And not as through one who sinned, so is the gift; for the judgment was from one to condemnation, but the grace from many offenses to justification.” Now let them say where that imitation has a place in these words. “From one,” he says, “to condemnation”: from one what, if not offense? For he explains this when he adds: “but the grace from many offenses to justification.” Why then is judgment from one offense to condemnation, but grace from many offenses to justification? If there is no original offense, does not the judgment lead men to condemnation from many offenses, just as grace leads to justification? For grace does not forgive many offenses without the judgment also condemning many offenses. If they are led to condemnation from one offense because all the offenses which are condemned were committed in imitation of that one man, there is the same reason why they should be understood to be led to justification also from one offense, since all the offenses which are forgiven to the justified were committed in imitation of that one man. But this, of course, the apostle did not understand when he said: “The judgment was from one offense to condemnation, but the grace from many offenses to justification”! Rather let us understand the apostle and see that it was said, “the judgment from one offense to condemnation,” because it would suffice for condemnation even if there were nothing in men but original sin. For although the condemnation of those who have joined their own sins to the original offense is heavier, and heavier for each one the more gravely he has sinned, yet even that alone which is drawn from origin not only separates from the kingdom of God, which they themselves also confess that infants who die without receiving the grace of Christ cannot enter, but also makes them strangers to salvation and eternal life, which can be nothing other than the kingdom of God, into which fellowship with Christ alone brings us.

And for this reason from Adam, in whom we all sinned, we have not drawn all our sins, but only the original one; but from Christ, in whom we are all justified, we obtain the forgiveness not only of that original sin but also of the others which we ourselves have added. That is why “not as through one who sinned, so is the gift.” “For the judgment” from one offense, if it is not forgiven, that is, from the original one, can already lead “to condemnation,” “but the grace” leads “from many offenses” forgiven, that is, not only from that original one but also from all the others, “to justification.”

“For if through the offense of one death reigned through one, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and of righteousness reign in life through the one Jesus Christ.” Why did death reign through one through the offense of one, unless because they were held by the bond of death in that one in whom all sinned, even if they did not add sins of their own? Otherwise death did not reign through one through the offense of one, but through the many offenses of many, through each one who sins. For if the others died through the offense of another man because, following him who went before them in offending, they imitated him, then he too, and much more, died through the offense of another, since the devil went before him in offending in such a way that he even persuaded him to the offense. But Adam persuaded none of his imitators, and many who are called his imitators either have not heard, or do not believe at all, that he existed and committed any such thing. How much more rightly, then, as I have already said, would the apostle have set the devil as the source, from whom alone he would say that sin and death passed through all, if in this place he had wished to teach not propagation but imitation! For much more reasonably is Adam called an imitator of the devil, whom he had as the persuader to sin, if anyone can imitate even one who persuaded him to nothing of the kind, or whom he does not know at all. And what is “those who receive the abundance of grace and of righteousness,” except that the grace of forgiveness is given not only for that sin in which all sinned but also for those which they added, and such righteousness is given to these men that, whereas Adam consented to the one who persuaded him to sin, these do not yield even to one who compels them? And what is “much more will they reign in life,” since the reign of death drags many more into eternal punishments, unless we understand that in both cases those same people are meant who pass from Adam to Christ, that is, from death to life, because they will reign without end in eternal life more than death reigned in them for a time and with an end?

“Therefore, as through the offense of one to all men unto condemnation, so also through the justification of one to all men unto justification of life.” This offense of one, if we attend to imitation, will be none other than the devil's. But since it is plain that it is said of Adam, not of the devil, it remains that not imitation but the propagation of sin is to be understood. For in what he says of Christ, “through the justification,” he expressed more than if he had said “through the righteousness of one.” For he means that justification by which Christ justifies the ungodly, which he has not set forth for imitation; he alone can do it. For the apostle could rightly say, “Be imitators of me, as I also am of Christ,” but he would never say, “Be justified by me, as I also was justified by Christ”; since there can be, and are, and have been many righteous men worth imitating, but no one is righteous and justifying except Christ. Hence it is said: “To him who believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness.” Whoever, then, dares to say “I justify you” must consequently also say “Believe in me,” which none of the saints could rightly say, [except the Holy One of the holy ones]: “Believe in God, and believe in me”; so that, because he justifies the ungodly, to him who believes in him who justifies the ungodly faith is reckoned as righteousness.

For if imitation alone makes sinners through Adam, why does not imitation alone make men righteous through Christ also? “For as through the offense of one,” he says, “to all men unto condemnation, so also through the justification of one to all men unto justification of life.” Accordingly, the “one” and the “one” should have been set down by these men not as Adam and Christ but as Adam and Abel. For although many sinners went before us in the time of this life, and those who sinned at a later time imitated them, yet these men want only Adam to be meant, in whom all sinned by imitation, because he was the first of men to sin. And therefore Abel should have been named, in whom alone men are likewise justified by imitation, since he was the first of men to live righteously. Or if, because of a certain point of time belonging to the beginning of the New Testament, Christ has been set as the head of the righteous for imitation, Judas his betrayer should have been set as head of sinners. But if Christ is the one in whom all are justified because not imitation of him alone makes men righteous, but grace regenerating through the Spirit, then Adam too is the one in whom all sinned because not imitation of him alone makes men sinners, but punishment generating through the flesh. That is also why “all” and “all” is said. For those who are generated through Adam are not all the same people who are regenerated through Christ; but this was rightly said because, just as no one's carnal generation is except through Adam, so no one's spiritual generation is except through Christ. For if some could be generated in the flesh not through Adam, and some regenerated in the Spirit not through Christ, “all” would not be said clearly either here or there. But these same “all” he afterwards calls “many”; for those who are few can in some respect be “all.” But the carnal generation has many, and the spiritual has many, although the spiritual has not so many as the carnal. Nevertheless, as the one has all men, so the other has all righteous men; because as no one is a man apart from the one, so no one is a righteous man apart from the other, and in both there are many. “For as through the disobedience of one man many were made sinners, so through the obedience of one man many will be made righteous.”